The Influence of Slander

Today, we bring you Craig Fischer’s review of Michel Rabagliati’s latest graphic novel, Paul Joins the Scouts. This piece of course acts as something of a pendant to the larger essay Craig wrote about Rabagliati’s work recently, which he summarizes briefly within the new review:

Here on TCJ a few weeks ago, I wrote an essay about Rabagliati’s work before Scouts, arguing that readers can assemble a rough but consistent chronology for Rabagliati/Paul’s life from the events presented and alluded to in such “stand-alone” books as Paul Has a Summer Job (2002) and The Song of Roland (2009/English translation 2012). Scouts fills out the chronology further, showing us much more of Paul’s childhood than we’ve previously seen. I also mentioned that Paul’s father typically gets a lot more narrative attention from Rabagliati than Paul’s mother, but that too is corrected in Scouts, where Paul’s mother Aline is portrayed as a vivacious young wife frustrated by living in an apartment next door to two nosy relatives, one of whom is Paul’s great-aunt Janette, “seamstress, hat-maker and old maid” (17), who we’ve seen previously (as a much older person) in Paul Moves Out (2004/2005). The pleasures of the Paul series are two-fold: each individual graphic novel has a proper beginning, middle and end, and can be read on its own, but those who read the entire series notice reoccurring characters and motifs and can assemble a broader picture of Paul’s life.

Elsewhere:

—There’s some kind of convention going on today, but I have no idea how to find out any information about it. It’s really important to me that I know every bit of information about the big sfx movies I’m not going to see in two years, though. Truly at a loss here…

—Toronto developer David Mirvish is selling the “Mirvish Village” plot of land, which means that local comics institution The Beguiling will probably be needing a new location soon. The Toronto Star has the story.